Customer Reviews

The Harrad Experiment: Special 25th Anniversary Edition with a New Afterword and Bibliography by the

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I first read The Harrad Experiment in 1973. I was about to leave home for college in a few days, and I wanted something to read on the journey. That notion didn't work; I got the book home and stayed up most of the night reading it. But it did work after all; I read it again on the trip, and many times since.

Bob Rimmer's writing (in Harrad, and in his other books which I read later) was a major influence on my feelings about life and love. (Perhaps getting to me at a susceptible age helped.) Harrad taught me that (to steal the words of another writer, Robert Heinlein, whose character Lazarus Long said it better than I can) "the more you love, the more you can love" and (in Rimmer's own words) that "love is laughter, too".

Harrad isn't perfect; it is in certain ways a period piece, and Bob Rimmer has the occasional sexist moment (though remarkably few for a book that came out in 1966). But it remains the best fictional introduction to polyamory (a word that didn't even exist when Harrad was written) that I have encountered.

The 25th Anniversary Edition has an extra bonus; a short autobiography of Bob Rimmer. All fans of Rimmer's work will want to read it; it's almost worth the cost of a new book, even if you already have a dogeared copy of the old Bantam edition of The Harrad Experiment. There is also an updated bibliography/reading list, so you'll actually have a chance of being able to find the books.

I cannot mistake it for being anything but a fantasy, but one that appeals a lot to me...women who one gets to see naked at least once a day, a roommate that you are told has been computer-assigned to you on the basis of sexual compatablily, a nice isolated New England college. Such a life - would definitely be good!

I enjoyed the heck out of this in the early seventies. While not anywhere as explicit as "Literotica" or other writings on the web, back then it was pretty hot stuff, particularly for someone who had lazy intellectual pretensions. The scene where two of our heroes/heroines have a long discussion of the history of polyamory while continuously coupled was especially pleasing.

Since then, I've grown up some; I've realized the war between advocates of prohibitions on sexual conduct, usually backed by the established religions, on the one hand, and the advocates of sexual license on the other, is never going to be won by one side or the other. Although not religious myself, I am mature enough to know that neither side is entirely right or wrong, and the advocacy of complete sexual license is often just one other strategy for guys to try and cut themselves out as big a slice of the female gene pie as possible. Heck, it sure worked for Rasputin and Charles Manson. I've also noticed the participants in the experiment are a cross-section of a '60s student body - white, middle class, without physical handicaps, and secure in their futures. Except for the young Indian girl who taken out of poverty is quickly converted to the "new American way." The earlier writer who said this reflected cultural arrogance is on the mark here.

Still, I still keep my copy around, reread it from time to time, and sure wish I could get dormed with someone like Sheila.

When this book first came out in the mid 'Sixties, it could only be ordered by mail through an ad in Playboy. Three years later, I found it in stores as a Bantam paperback. Symbolic of the fact that if the Sexual Revolution had been a car, it would have had a 32-valve Northstar engine, but no ABS braking. This book was clearly aimed at the undergrad of my day, when college administrations held clear-cut in loco parentis authority, and the directors of girls' dorms were called "house mothers". You were taking a big chance going on a "panty raid" back then. In retrospect, I'm not really sure that today's way is necessarily "more enlightened". But you couldn't tell us that back then, with our hormones in overdrive! As a story, though, this one's short on credibilty. It's told through "diaries" of four students attending a privately-endowed "auxiliary college". Students still attend classes at recognized schools, but also attend Harrad's "human values" seminars, and live with a roommate of the opposite sex. One of the boys is a BMOC type whose sex appeal already gets him places--what's he doing here? His roomie is a shy rich girl with a low opinion of her own sex appeal. Then there's a school nerd who's paired off with this "prom queen" type who he'd be afraid to even say hi to back home, much less ask her out. But where are the prom queens who'll only date the football jocks? How about those jocks who only date the cheerleaders? Hel-lo? Unlike in the "Nerds" films, the socially inept don't get even, they remain an underclass. Rimmer is about as subtle as a Richter-scale quake when he implies that these kids' main problem is "society" and "the establishment". He forgets that, in the real world, young adults also have their peers to contend with. In the course of the story, he has his protagonists reading a lot of writings from philosophers and sociologists who are selectively "other-worldly" in their thinking. I think he should have also had them reading up on Japanese Moritist psychology, which among other things, teaches that it's counterproductive to obsess over a lot of "shoulds" and "oughts", and far healthier to come to terms with the world as it actually is.

... the book is not without merits. It's presentation of idealistic youth in a changing culture was a refreshing reminder, for a child growing up in the age of irony and cynicism, that there was a time in America when the youth believed that change for the better was possible, an intellengcia who were educated by reading Hermann Hesse and Gibran as opposed to Hegel, Chomsky & Foucault. I have reread "Harrad" many times and am able to laugh at what I once thought possible and the ending, oh the ending, I still find satisfying. Although being a product of the early nineties I am admitidly a cynic verging on being apathetic I will say this, if change is at all possible, it is possible only if approached from the perspective of the "insix", read the book and you'll know what I mean. All in all I give "Harrad" four stars for even with it's faults it still portrays a time and place that one can look back on and say, "At Least They Believed In Something."

Still a good laugh after 35+ years. I thought it was "dirty" when I read it as a teenager, but what the heck, I was about 14 at the time. And you know what, the attitude towards sex, while casual, was humorous and fun and respectful and serious all at once, and that made a huge impression on me at the time. And I'm not sorry that it did.

And even back then I knew it was fiction! A fun read, and as other reviewers have pointed out, a good portrait of the kind of innocent idealism so many of us shared back then.

I missed out on reading this watershed book when it was "hip" to do so in the late 1960s. A little too young to appreciate it at that time--it's just sad thinking about the end of the so-called sexual revolution with the onslaught of yuppies, AIDS, and political conservatism starting in the 1980s. But having just finished it, I'll support the previous reviewer--"Harrad" is an excellent, engaging, always entertaining book! Ah, would the world of relations between thinking men and women be as utopian (and as free) as Rimmer describes at mythical Harrad College (an amalgam of HARvard & RADcliffe), located on a mysterious estate in tree-lined Cambridge, Mass. Somewhere, somewhen, we can only hope that a 21st century version of the Harrad Experiment will occur. The premise holds up well after 30 years and could still serve as a model for a bold community of college educated, liberal-minded, free-thinking men and women where a nonmonogamous--perhaps even bisexual--recreational public and private sex and clothing-optional lifestyle is respected as an individual right of freedom ; it should be celebrated as a sign of personal expression and liberation, regardless of age or body type. Unfortunately, the Baby Boomers of the '60s--who could have sustained the Harrad revolution-- have already settled into staid monogamy,babymaking, and church going.

I read this book when I visited my sister at her college, back in 1970; I was 12 at the time. This is funny, in that Rimmer's vision set my "over-intelligent" mind seeking the kind of intimacy, honesty, and sensitivity that he described...and I hadn't even gone to high school!

I've re-read the book several times over the years. I find the characters entrancing and their explorations enlightening. I agree that the book feels dated in this cynical world that poises at the brink of a new century, but the essence of the novel--the exploration of the fullness and freedom of human loving--is as fresh as advice that has never been followed.

Now staring down the barrel of 40, I still find the joyous exuberance of Harrad to be uplifting, entertaining, educational. Reading the book for perhaps the dozenth time is like visiting old friends who still hold their beautiful vision close to their hearts. Would that I could have shared in that experiment. Would that I had been so fortunate, so strong, as to forge this daring new blueprint for human loving. But I still do my part.

I strongly recommend this book to any and all who would explore the greatest realms of human passion. With love like this, we might finally enter that long-fabled human millenium.

Robert Rimmer's THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT is an amusing throw-back to the "free love" movement of the psychedelic `60's. I first read it when I was a freshman in college in 1970 (didn't we all?), and I remember finding it sexually provocative and uninhibitedly thrilling. Now, in 2011, I can say it's neither.

The novel is written as if it is the report of a real experiment, where a group of college students are assigned opposite sex roommates, exercise and play sports in the nude, and are expected to have multiple sex partners over the four years of their participation in the program. Rimmer suggests that monogamy is not a natural state for human beings, and that we'd all be better off if we could love - and make love with - a group of people in our lives. This isn't a novel about "wife swapping," but about what is now called polyamory, which acknowledges our ability to love more than one person at a time. Rimmer seemed convinced that this "what the world needs now is love" attitude could change the world.

There is a lot of sex in THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT, it's just not particularly exciting - and it all feels a little "Lifetime Movie Network" by the end. Sheila falls in love with her roommate Stanley and they have sex, but Stanley also wants to have sex with Beth, who also wants to have sex with Harry and Jack. Sheila is jealous, even though the daily Harrad College lectures keep reinforcing the idea that jealousy and possessiveness are what prevent us from living up to our full potential as loving beings. Harry is jealous, too, since he loves his roommate Beth (who's getting it on with Stanley and Jack) - eventually Harry and Sheila commiserate together (on multiple levels). And so it goes.

Rimmer sprinkles his story with examples of the crass and unattractive behaviors of people (especially men) in the traditional monogamous world - a drunk frat boy tries to score with Sheila (he doesn't love her so it would be wrong) and a group of New Years revelers attempt to rape her (which would also be wrong). The novel has an idyllic if unrealistic ending celebrating Rimmer's philosophy. If we could all just love one another - and make love with one another - the world would be a better place.

This is such a `60's story that it's hard to take it seriously today. Then again, I got a kick out of taking another look at something that really did impact me as a young adult.

I read this book as a frshman in college and it really did change my perceptions on life. I found myself getting lost in the philosophy and taking a journey within myself as I journied with the students Stanley, Shiela, Beth, and Harry through their four years at Harrad. I think that this is a book that all young people should read before their beliefs get set in stone.

Actually my mom didn't want me to read this book. I mean, I started it and couldn't stop . You might be wondering why I said my mom didn't want me to read it well I'm 13. I had to sneak around to read it but it was worth it. Thank you so much Robert Rimmer for giving me somthing to read other than the mindless stuff I usually do.